


So Long as I Remember

by juniperandjawbones



Series: Few Against the Wind [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Bandits & Outlaws, Blood, Campfires, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Heartache, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Memories, POV Original Character, POV Third Person, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Sacrifice, Swordfighting, Wedding Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 00:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21467395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniperandjawbones/pseuds/juniperandjawbones
Summary: The full story behind the little gold ring on Arienne's finger prompts a difficult conversation with Alistair.
Relationships: Alistair/Female Tabris (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age)
Series: Few Against the Wind [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1549087
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	So Long as I Remember

The song of a thousand summer cicadas hummed in the trees, a noisy accompaniment to the periodic ringing of Alistair’s whetstone sliding against his blade. A dancing fire crackled merrily in the center of the clearing where they’d made camp near the Imperial Highway.

Arienne Tabris, lost in thought, watched the warm orange glow bouncing off the surface of a ring she spun absently around her finger.

Four weeks now, they’d have been married. A full moon cycle. Long enough to conceive a child, she realized. Would she have wanted that? Would _he_? 

She supposed she’d never know, and she reminded herself that it mattered little now, anyway. Still, in the quiet moments when they sat down to rest after supper in the evenings, she couldn’t help but think about these things. Unanswered questions and would-have-beens materialized in her mind, spectres on a lost path she had never been meant to tread.

“I notice you wear that ring on your left hand.” Morrigan’s silky voice interrupted Ari’s thoughts. “Am I to assume that means you’re married?”

Ari caught the sidelong glance Alistair gave her, an uncomfortable expression on his face. Yet there was a curiosity there, too, and he watched her expectantly as the whetstone swished against the edge of his sword.

She’d always assumed he knew the story, that Duncan had relayed to him the events that had transpired the day she’d been conscripted. Judging by the look on Alistair’s face now, however, this was perhaps not the case. But he had never pressed her for information about precisely how she’d come to join the Grey Wardens, nor had she offered up the story unprompted. 

She wasn’t sure why she’d never told him. After all, he had been more than willing to confide in her after Duncan’s death. But then again, they’d gone through that together. She supposed perhaps it was because their friendship had always been so jovial and light, and she feared the heavy burden of her past might weigh it down and make it more difficult to carry through the months of hardship that stretched ahead of them now.

Ari cleared her throat. “No, actually,” she said, her eyes returning to her finger. “I’m not. I was betrothed, but… it didn’t work out.”

“Yet still you wear the ring,” Morrigan observed, her keen eyes also fixed upon the simple golden band. “You must have truly loved him.”

A sad smile curved Ari’s lips. “To love him, I’d have had to know him first. We met on the morning of our wedding day.”

“An arranged marriage?” the mage asked in a tone of surprise, raising her brows. “That can’t have gone over well for a woman like you.”

“I wasn’t terribly keen on the idea, no. But it’s tradition. A wedding is a rite of passage in the alienage. I’d long since come of age, and my father and the Hahren had found me a suitable mate, a smith from Highever named Nelaros. He was handsome and kind, and a hard worker, or so I was told. Love matters little in cementing such a match, though I’m told many couples do grow to love one another over time. Perhaps we would have, too, if given the opportunity.”

“Why did you not get the chance?”

“On the day of my wedding, a group of shems came into the village—the Arl’s son and some of his men, looking for trouble and a few elven women to satisfy their hunger for pleasures of the flesh. They abducted me and my bridesmaids, took us to the Arl’s estate, and threw us in a cell. They murdered one of my friends before my eyes, then raped my cousin… I managed to escape and found Nelaros just as they cut his throat.”

Alistair looked horrorstruck, his mouth slightly agape, the whetstone frozen in mid-stroke.

Morrigan gave her an appraising sort of look. “I think I can guess what you must’ve done then.”

“I slaughtered them,” Ari confirmed, without an ounce of remorse. “Every last one. When the Arl’s guards came to the alienage that night to take me away, Duncan intervened. He invoked the Right of Conscription.”

“Thus saving your life.”

“Most likely.”

Morrigan cocked her head, gesturing to the ring. “If he was killed before you wed, how did you come by that?”

“It was still in his pocket when he died. I’m not sure what prompted me to look, but I knew he’d crafted it himself in his forge, pieced it together from little scraps of gilding he’d been saving away. I kept it, to remind myself of everything he’d sacrificed for me.”

The fire snapped loudly, shooting higher over the logs as a bit of sap burned away.

“’Tis unfortunate that such a twist of fate brought you to the Wardens,” said Morrigan after a moment. She gave Ari a searching look. “Do you wish it hadn’t been so?”

Ari shot a glance at Alistair, who had abandoned his task now, his focus solely on her.

“I wish a kind, innocent man hadn’t died,” she replied, her gaze darting away from his to look into the flickering orange flames. “I wish my cousin hadn’t been taken to bed against her will.”

“But then you likely _would_ be wed,” Morrigan countered. “You’d probably be standing over a simmering pot of stew in Highever right now, waiting for your husband to come home from the forge. Perhaps… perhaps you’d be with _child_, even.”

Ari’s head jerked upward to look at the mage. Could this shem sorceress read minds, she wondered? But Morrigan was not looking at her any longer. Her golden-yellow stare had become fixed, instead, upon Alistair, as if gauging his reaction to her words. Anger bubbled up inside her. Was this woman making her relive a nightmare just to watch Alistair squirm?

“I am where I am,” snapped Ari, eyes flashing, “and what’s past is past. There’s no more to say about it.” She stood abruptly, the log she’d been perching on rolling backward in the grass a few inches. “I’m going for a walk.”

As she stalked off, Alistair stood, too. 

“You shouldn’t go out on your own,” he called after her. “Not with the price Loghain’s put on our heads.”

“I’ll be fine,” she argued, not turning around to look at him.

“Ari, I really don’t think—”

“I said I’ll be _fine.”_

She allowed herself to glance back just once, when she’d reached the edge of the campfire’s light, and she saw him standing there with his sword hanging limply in one hand. His brow was knitted with concern, and he looked hurt and confused. Swallowing back the pang of guilt that twisted her stomach, she pressed on, the cicadas above her reaching a crescendo as she crossed through the trees toward the highway. 

It would do her no good to get lost in the woods. She would follow the road long enough to clear her head, then turn back. Maybe, if she was very lucky, Alistair and Morrigan would have already had their nightly row and stormed off to their respective tents by the time she returned.

The steady hum of the insects in the trees was replaced by a chorus of crickets as she emerged, trudging up the shallow incline that led to the highway which divided the lands of the Bannorn. On the other side, she could make out the jagged tips of a thousand stalks of corn silhouetted against the cloudless, star-strewn sky. Bright light from the twin moons above illuminated the landscape, but rather than finding the wide, open space beautiful or freeing, as some may have, she suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of agoraphobia.

For all its faults, the alienage had been home, and she’d found comfort in its narrow, crowded streets. Its walls, constructed to keep her kind confined to their slums, had also been reassuring in their own way, offering the elves a sense of protection from the rest of the city.

When she walked through the gates each afternoon to her job in a rundown shem tavern near the markets, it felt a bit like leaving a mother’s arms and stepping out into a foreign and hostile world. When she returned at night, she knew that the jeers and the groping hands of the tavern’s drunken patrons wouldn’t follow her beyond the gates. 

She had been safe there—as safe as an elf in the city could be, at least. Or so she had thought. How very wrong she had been…

A rustling among the stalks of corn caught her attention, her long, pointed ears pricking up at the sound. Automatically, her fingertips found the hilts of her daggers, and she unsheathed them silently as she looked around, eyes glowing like a cat’s in the dark. 

Several shadowy figures materialized from the field and circled to surround her in the middle of the road. _Humans._ She counted four, all men, and all with their weapons drawn.

“Well,” said the shortest of the lot, a man with a stocky frame and a cruel face dimpled all over like the skin of an orange. “Look what we have here. It’s one o’ them Grey Warden fugitives Teyrn Loghain is after.”

Ari furrowed her brow, adopting an expression of confusion. “You must be mistaken. I’m no Warden. Just a simple traveler, taking an evening stroll.”

The man turned his head and spat in the dirt. “Nug shit,” he retorted, looking back at her. “We know exactly who you are, knife-ear, an’ there’s a hefty bounty been put out on yer pretty little head. You come quietly, we may just deliver you alive. After we’ve had a bit of _fun_, o’course.”

The other men laughed, sneering at her with yellowed teeth.

“You’re welcome to try,” Ari replied, giving her blades a casual twirl in her hands.

“There’s _four_ of us,” said another man, this one tall and lanky with a mop of dark hair and a sparsely-stubbled chin that badly wanted a shave. He pointed at her with a long, thin finger. “And there’s only _one_ of you.”

“Impressive arithmetic, but I still like my odds.” She shrugged, smirking. “Better men than you have gasped their last breaths with my blade in their throats.”

The short one lifted his weapon, and his pockmarked face split into a seedy, gap-toothed grin. “Have it your way, love.”

They rushed her all at once, but she was ready. Daggers whizzing as they cut through the air, she took the tall one down with ease, blood spraying in an arc as she sliced through his flesh. The others seemed to hesitate for a fraction of an instant, and then the air was filled with the clang of metal against metal. She whirled and dodged, their weapons glancing off as she parried their blows.

She couldn’t have pinpointed the exact moment Alistair appeared. She only knew that one second she was fending off the three remaining bandits alone, and the next his broad back was pressed against hers, his longword singing as it brought another to his knees. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the man’s head roll off his shoulders and bounce along the ground, coming to a halt several feet away from his lifeless body.

They made quick work of the others, Alistair effortlessly cutting down the slower of the two. This left only the short, stocky man, who looked at them through watery eyes round with fear.

“Please,” he whimpered, still halfheartedly brandishing his weapon and backing away with slow, hesitant steps. “I can see now that this was a mistake. If you just let me go, there’ll be no more trouble, I promise you.”

“There’ll be no more trouble either way,” Arienne told him. “And I think it would be far more satisfying to finish the job.”

“But I… I have a_ wife!”_ The man nodded, seeming to latch onto this idea, which he had clearly invented on the spot. “An’… an’ a babe on the way!”

“Oh yeah?” asked Alistair, arching a brow. “What’s her name, this gravid wife of yours?”

The man hesitated for a beat, then stammered, “Cor—Cordelia… nita?”

_“Cordelianita?” _Ari snorted, incredulous. “Nice try.” Then she stepped forward, easily deflected a feeble blow from the man’s rusty sword, and sank one of her daggers to the hilt in his chest, giving it a swift twist for good measure. He sputtered, and a fountain of scarlet issued from his lips before he sank motionless onto the ground.

The two Wardens stood there for a moment, surveying their kills and panting from the effort.

After a moment, Alistair spoke up. “I told you not to come alone.”

“And _I_ made it clear I didn’t want to be followed,” Ari argued, not meeting his eyes as she took a few steps to the side of the road. She knelt, wiping her blades in the grass. “I had it handled.”

“Yes, but think how much more _work_ it would have been, taking out all four of them by yourself. You’d probably still be fighting, and all this extra blood and gunk would be on _you_ instead of me.” She stood and turned to glare at him, and he drew a deep breath. “I was worried about you, all right? After what happened back at the camp, you telling that story, I thought you might… _need_ someone. To talk to, or… just to be near, I don’t know.”

“If I’d wanted that, I’d have asked for it.”

_“Would_ you, though?” He gave her a skeptical look. “The first time we set up camp, you struggled with your tent for a full _hour_ before you finally admitted you needed someone to help you get the pole set. Tonight, when you were preparing dinner, you tried to carry a full jug of water, four large trout, the cooking pan, _and_ a basket full of mushrooms to the fire, and then you tried to shoo me off when I offered a hand. If I hadn’t caught that jug when it fell from your hip—” He splayed the fingers on both of his hands and made a crashing sound.

Ari felt the corner of her mouth twitching and fought against the grin that was threatening to creep onto her lips.

“Look,” he went on, “after Ostagar, you helped me work through everything that happened. You were always ready to listen when I needed to talk. I guess I just wanted to try to repay the favor. I never knew what led to your conscription. Not the details, anyway. All Duncan told me was that you’d been in imminent danger of arrest. When I asked him what for, he just shrugged and said, _‘That’s her story to tell.’_ I never asked you, because it really wasn’t any of my business. But now that I know… Maker, Arienne. I’m _so_ sorry.”

“So am I,” she said quietly, glancing down at her ring. “Nelaros didn’t deserve to die for this.”

“He didn’t,” agreed Alistair at once, shaking his head. “But… Morrigan was right about one thing. It _did_ bring you to the Wardens, and I’m not sorry you’re here now. I don’t think it was by chance.”

“What, you think it was fate?” Ari asked, sheathing her blades. “Or your _god?”_ She let out a humorless huff of laughter. “Have you noticed that divine intervention never seems to favor my kind? Must we always be the sacrificial lambs so that the shems may keep their comforts?”

“I—no, of _course_ that’s not what I mean,” he said, taking a small step in her direction. “But Duncan had reason to seek you out. And if he hadn’t conscripted you, you might not have come otherwise.”

“Oh, _yes_. It’s _much_ better this way, with me having no say in the matter.”

“I thought all this—stopping the Blight—I thought it was _important_ to you.” 

There was unmistakable frustration in his tone, now. She looked at his face, at that wounded expression that had manifested again, and she heaved a sigh, swallowing down the lump forming in her throat. Her eyes stung, and she shut them tight.

“Listen,” she said once she could find her voice, “I understand how strongly you feel about your duty as a Warden, and how much you wanted this for yourself. This is your crusade. And maybe it could have been mine, too, if I’d have been given the choice.” When she opened her eyes again, tears sparkled at the brims. “But I _wasn’t _given a choice. And that _matters_. I need you to see how much that matters.” She paused, pressing her lips together to stop them from trembling. “I had a life before all this, Alistair. A family, a _future_—however bleak it may have seemed to an outsider, it was _mine_. And your people took it all away from me. I’m here now, and I’ll fight beside you and do what I must to keep the Blight at bay. But I’m not going to stand here and pretend that I’m grateful for the events that brought me to the Wardens. My cousin was raped. Good people _died._ If I could take that all back, I would, without hesitation.”

She moved to head back in the direction they’d come, but the hint of a quaver in Alistair’s voice as he called after her halted her in her steps.

“We would never have met, Ari.”

She turned to look at him, standing there among the fresh carnage, and a rivulet of warm saltwater spilled over onto her cheek and shone silver-bright in the moonlight.

“I know.”

Without another word, she made her way back to the trees. The cicadas’ song drowned out her retreating steps as Alistair watched, his eyes lingering on the blood-spattered gold band around her finger.


End file.
